There was a hesitancy in Vickie’s voice that Eve could sympathize with. Vickie was wary of opening old wounds.

“As I said on the phone, I’m investigating a case that could be related to yours, but I’m not going to ask you to go back over everything again. I’d just like you to look at some pictures and tell me if you recognize any of the items.” Eve took out her phone and held it out to her.

Vickie regarded the screen, which was smudged with greasy fingerprints, and frowned. “Let’s sit down. You can scroll through the pictures and I’ll stop you if I see something I recognize. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Eve said, feeling stupid for not cleaning her dirty phone before offering it to a germophobe. They sat down side by side on the couch and Eve slowly swiped through the photos of the things in Coyle’s drawer. They went through about two dozen items before Vickie said something, her eyebrows arching with surprise.

“That’s mine.” She pointed to a picture of a miniature teacup.

“How do you know?”

“It was part of a four-piece tea set that was in a huge antique dollhouse that belonged to my mother. The dollhouse is long gone, but I kept the tea set on a bookshelf in the guest room where my mom stays when she visits. One day, I noticed a teacup was gone.”

“Was this day before or after you were attacked?”

“After,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “Two weeks after. My mom came to stay with me when I was recovering. When I was cleaning up the room prior to her arrival I saw that the cup was gone. It really threw me. I mean, what was I supposed to do? There was no way I could replace the cup before Mom got here and I couldn’t leave it like that. I had no choice but to remove one of the cups and hope for the best.”

“I don’t understand,” Eve said. “Why did you remove a cup?”

“So there would be two cups left instead of three,” Vickie said. “What would Mom think if she saw the room in disarray? She’d be even more concerned about me than she already was. The two cups worked out fine while she was here. She was too busy fussing over me to care. But after she left, I couldn’t live with it. Two cups would have been fine for anybody else who didn’t know they were part of a set. But I knew. I couldn’t fool myself and so I ended up throwing them all away.”

Eve nodded, not because she thought what Vickie did was the common sense thing to do but to buy herself some time to decide whether to show her one more photo, one that could cause her some pain.

Vickie asked, “Where did you find my cup?”